From the moment the missile fell on the school in Majdal Shams, it was evident that the tragedy in the Golan Heights could potentially precipitate a succession of other tragedies in other places.
The greatest fear was that it could trigger "sedition" ("fitna" in Arabic) between Shiites and the Druze in Lebanon. In fact, the term "fitna" is everywhere in the media and social media, and it has been regularly echoed by politicians, creating the impression that the world can be split into villains, who are "fanning the flames" of "fitna", and the virtuous, who are striving to "put out its fire."
The prospect of a fitna that has caused panic does not stem, as is often claimed, from contentious periods in Islamic history, though those periods and their grudges, both real or mythologized, can always be used to stoke the flames.
Our current political system and the relationships it engenders are its real detonators. Political systems put out the flames of fitna when they treat citizens and communities equally, represent the free will of the people, abide by laws, and monopolize the means of violence. When they do the opposite, on the other hand, they fuel the fitna.
As for the particular form that doing the opposite takes in the countries of the Arab Levant, it is that of a militia regime, that is, a political system in which militias have the upper hand. In Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq, power has become equivalent to this overlap through direct or indirect Iranian support, granting militias at least four privileges:
- The privilege to bear arms and build armies, with all the power and control over what remains of political life that this translates to.
- An economic privilege that allows militias to run a shady parallel economy in which smuggling networks play a central role.
- A security privilege that allows them to dig tunnels and hideouts where militants can flee in times of danger, while other citizens are left to confront the threat head on.
- Lastly, they enjoy an ideological privilege, so to speak. The narrative of the militias about the state of play and contradictions becomes the hegemonic, legitimate, and patriotic narrative, while all other narratives are deemed to be heretical, traitorous, and deviant.
The position of the outside world grants them another privilege, though it comes to us somewhat circuitously: We are well aware that the Palestinians, as well as the Lebanese and Syrians, have suffered from the impunity afforded to Israel and the freedom given to its political and military leadership to do whatever it deems appropriate to safeguard the security of its society and state.
However, the militia regimes of the Arab Levant also operate with impunity, keeping in mind that the Israeli state does not perpetrate crimes against its own people, while the crimes of our militia regimes, particularly the Syrian regime, are perpetrated first and foremost against their own populations.
While the Gaza war has diverted attention away from this privilege, it has created a pervasive sense of absurdity and futility in the Levant, whose population feels that it is facing a deeply agonizing and robust status quo that will never change.
Societies’ fragility stems from this deeply entrenched set of privileges and its regime, turning "fitna" between "brothers" into something to be expected or even an inherent feature of life itself. The question of whether the rocket that hit the school in Majdal Shams struck this target intentionally or not - whether it had been aimed at the school or strayed from its intended trajectory - becomes a minor detail compared to a political system whose consciousness and behavior are founded in missiles.
One doesn't need a great deal of imagination to envision the regions of the Arab Levant, or its sects, exchanging missile fire - scenes that Lebanon, Syria, or Iraq could amuse us with at any moment. The fact that we haven’t had this kind of explosive action yet, due to capability limitations, does not negate the intention to undertake it, and these intentions are loaded and very much ready to explode.
If the Majdal Shams massacre is a ramification of an ongoing conflict, we should think of how things are going in the regions that are supposedly free of conflict: what would happen tomorrow if a missile were launched from any region or by any sect in the Levant at another region or sect? In all likelihood, the only outcome would be more missiles in response, provided that the target has some in its possession.
It no longer matters, amid this state of affairs, that a war is underway in the region that some call fateful or something similar. This is the "natural" state of the entire region, even if some parts of it get ahead of others during this or that period. Instead of this so-called "nation" (Ummah) putting all of its capabilities behind the fateful war, as the militants advocate, the madness of war pervades within the so-called "nation," aggravating its fragmentation and infighting. The more we "fortify" the front against the "enemy," the more rifts we create amongst ourselves.
A Hobbesian state of nature is precisely where the militia regime takes the region, leaving us in "a war of all against all" and rendering the lives of its inhabitants "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short."
"Fitna" has another definition beyond the one we fear and warn against. It can also mean mesmerizing beauty. Members of the militia regime may believe that these two definitions are one and the same, or that one cannot be complete without the other.
